Ordinarily, compostable material is piled on very large storage surfaces to form compost heaps where it is stored--possibly aerated by ditches--for a relatively long period of time. For the forming of such compost heaps portal frames are known which extend over the storage surface and bear at least one conveyor belt. The latter charges the material fed to it via a loading chute to a drop chute which extends downward in lance shape and from which the compost drops out in part in very large lumps and forms individual conical heaps; these conical heaps produce an undulated surface for the finished compost pile; if it is desired to eliminate this undulation, special smoothing work must be carried out with the use of expensive labor.
A further deficiency has been found in that so-called compost heaps or similar piles are repeatedly turned over or aerated during their existence. For the bottom aerating of such heaps it is known to establish a tunnel system of profiled shapes on the ground before they are produced, the tunnel system forming an air feed system for the finished heap; even after removing the profiled shapes out of the heap a loosened zone remains. This method has the disadvantage that both in the above procedure and in the case of ditches which are dug into the heap only given edge regions are aerated and between them columns of compacted compost or the like remain. Not least of all, this leads to an excessively malodorous heap.
Another problem resides in the relatively large amount of space required. It has been attempted to form the waste materials into compacts in order thereby to reduce by almost two-thirds the space required by the loose heap. It is also believed that compacted waste materials cause less annoyance by odor. For this purpose there are employed ordinary brick presses from which the compacts are removed in a separation operation and loaded onto pallets. The latter are carried by forklift trucks to a piling station and in another operation a dense heap of compacts placed one upon the other is established there.